Another important issue for lawn health: Aeration

Okay, so now is a good time for aeration. You might have even had someone come to your door to convince you to pay them to aerate your lawns.

I hope you accepted.

Here's why.

The next time you go to a garden center or a DIY store's garden section, peruse the aisles that deal with lawn care.


As you walk down the aisle of the garden center your eye might be caught by an amazing looking device. It looks like a boot with spikes jutting out of the bottom. Is it an armored soccer or football shoe? No. It is a lawn aerator. But what is the difference between these spikes and the plug method of aeration? And which is better for your lawn? Let's explore some of the going wisdom about this issue.

SPIKES

A spike for your lawn is exactly what it sounds like. It jabs deeply enough into your lawn to get through the grass's root system. Theoretically, this allows air, water and fertilizer access to the roots of your grass, thus making the lawn healthier and greener. However, spikes simply don't cut it on lawns planted on heavy clay or even in very loose soil. Why? Because clay is very resistant and will often seal right up as soon as you slide that spike out. And looser soil will just fall back into the hole, filling it right back up. Spikes take no dirt and no grass out, like plugs, but instead they just make an iffy hole.

PLUGS

Plugs are, once again, exactly what they sound like. They are tiny cylinders of your lawn that are cut and pulled out by a machine. These cylinders leave behind small holes which don't collapse much, if at all. And if loose soil collapsed into these small holes, that would be fine, there would still be a hole left, as the plugs remove a small quantity of soil and grass. What is more, the plugs are left on your lawn to break down and actually provide some nice natural fertilizer for your grass. A small drawback of having plugs taken out for aeration is that these little plugs are indeed left all over your lawn. So for a day or two your lawn might look like a tiny gopher was building a metropolis under your yard. However, the plugs deteriorate fast with water and traffic. And the holes that the plugs leave behind provide good, reliable access for fertilizer, water and air to the root system of your grass.

Which do I recommend for your lawn's aeration? Plugs, all the way. A local grass care company should be able to plug your lawn in a matter of minutes, usually for no more than $20. So leave the insane cleats at the garden center and hurry home to call the aerator guy.

Progress report on the lawn

Okay. Part of having a provident garden is being aware of the earth, soil, elements and everything else that might be a part of the ecosystem we are working in. This planet is providing us with the food and other necessities that we have and it is sheer selfish ignorance to not think to the future as we work today.

This is about stewardship, not global warming, so back off Mr. Gore.

I mention this because you might be tempted to call a lawn care company to come in and kill all of the weeds in your garden. Or you might be tempted to get a few packages of chemicals with which to kill weeds and fertilize your lawn.

I believe that we are better stewards when we use the principles of nature to make our lawns look lovely. A lovely lawn is also healthy for us-- it produces loads of oxygen. In fact, a lawn that is 50 feet by 50 feet produces enough oxygen for a family of four. Grass is a very efficient producer of oxygen due to the fact that a plant produces oxygen based on how much of the plant is green. So for a tree, it is the green leaves that do the delicious deed while the trunk does not. For grass, it is the entire blade that makes oxygen.

All of this while reducing carbon dioxide and other bad gases.

I'm not saying grass is better than a tree or two, but healthy, thick, lush grass is very good for your family--better than patchy, struggling grass. And adding chemicals to make a lawn healthier is essentially an oxymoron-- add toxic stuff to reduce toxic stuff.

Meh.

So all this is said to encourage organic and chemical-free lawn care as you make your yard yummy.

Behold:

and behold again:

If you compare this to two weeks previous, before I de-thatched, mowed, reseeded and watered regularly:

...you can see that there is some improvement. Yes, the light is different, but the grass is already a little thicker and has a more vibrant color.

Look at the detail. Here is the before detail shot:

and here is the one from two weeks later:

See how the brown patches are disappearing and how the grass is thickening?

No chemicals.

Remember that I first raked this-- which was plenty of work, don't get me wrong.

But remember that I had this assistant:

... so it was made better by how charming little Mr. B. can be.

After raking, I mowed to pick up more debris and get the soil more ready. Then I reseeded with straight seed-- no additives. Since then, I have kept the soil moist by watering a little in the morning and a little in the evening. We also had some rain-which helped.

I won't mow for at least one more week. That will give the seed time to sprout and establish itself better.

I feel great when I see my improving lawn. I feel a deep sense of satisfaction that I have wrought this lovely work of art in partnership with nature-- not opposing it with chemicals and the like. I feel more connected to the earth and the world around me when I water my lawn, standing in the presence of the Wasatch Mountains.

I even get to say hi to the multitude of joggers that pass by while I'm out front.

Provo is replete with joggers. One morning, during my ride to work- which is about a 2 mile, fifteen minute bike ride up a lame hill- I counted over twenty joggers.

Tomorrow, we will talk sustenance. Real sustenance from this land. Specifically: chickens and fruit trees.

Remember to share with your friends, family and enemies!

Moving right along

Today let's just take a little look at the tomato and other plant starts. I'll write a little about maintenance of these starts and what we can expect from them in the next couple of days.

But for starters, here's what needs to be happening, provident garden-wise, in order to maximize your garden's yield.

Garden soil really ought to be turned over about now.

• If you are starting from scratch, you will either be turning over lapsed garden soil or grass. 
• Lapsed garden soil
• If where you live has an existing garden patch that has not been used recently, I call this lapsed. You could call it dormant, like a volcano, but that sounds rather magma-like, so I'll stick with 'lapsed,' thanks!
• Best thing to do with lapsed soil is to spread a thin blanket of mulch, manure, grass, leaves or any other nice organic materials over your garden. You could spread any combination of the above as well.
• Next, either hand-till (with a spade (okay, a shovel)) the patch or use a good tiller. Roto-tillers can be rented easily. In my area, I call Ace Rents. 
• Spread the soil evenly. Don't get too OCD about this. 
• Water the soil every three to five days. This will get worms in your soil-- and they are magicians. You want them. 
• Grass
• If you will be working in a space that has grass or other plant-life, you want to remove it first, of course. 
• To remove grass, first use your shovel (spade!) to outline the patch. Just dig straight down about six inches all around the patch's edge.
• Next, use a spade/shovel to get down about two or three inches under the grass. Slide the shovel under there, cutting sheets of sod off. If you are careful, you can get good at this and end up with some nice pieces of sod. Use them to patch your yard in places! 
• http://www.helium.com/items/637668-sod-removal-and-moving-made-easy
• Once the sod is gone, add a layer of mulch, manure or whatever, then till it in as explained above. 
• Other
• You could also do some lasagna gardening!
• Choose your sunny space.
• Lay down a layer of cardboard to fill the space.
• Add a layer of leaves, grass or other organic material. Sticks and other tough materials won't really do it. 
• Add a layer of newspaper. 
• Add a layer of dirt. 
• Add another layer of organic material. 
• Add a layer of mulch. 
• Plant right in there. No roto- or hand-tilling required. 
• With your garden soil turned over, be sure to water every few days. Keep any neighborhood cats out-- you don't want cat crap in there. 
• If you are thinking you want a border around your garden, now is the time to get one in. I have no recommendations on this, as everything I've tried has been cheap and has not worked. I will probably go with arsenic-free railroad ties the next time I try. 
• Make sure you have all the seeds you need. 
• It would be good to have an idea of how you will use your space. Be like me and draw up a complicated schematic! Or don't.

Okay, so that's what we want to be doing right now. 

Here are my starts so far!

Here are some of the tomato plants. They are nearly 1 inch tall and have two leaves so far. This is significant. I'll talk about that more in a later post. 

They are looking good, no? 

Here are pumpkins: 

Alright, so maintenance of starts is easy. I water them every two-to-three days. The idea is to keep the dirt moist while they germinate, but then let the dirt dry out some after they've sprouted. This helps to establish roots.

As I've mentioned before, this is a great window for starts. Did you see how some of them were sort of bending in a certain direction? You will notice that they start bending toward the sunlight so that their leaves maximize their exposure. I don't want curvy plants, so I turn them every few days.

Those pumpkins are getting big already. I will be transplanting them by next Saturday so that there is one plant per 4-inch pot.

FYI, only one type of my eggplant has sprouted so far. This is fine; eggplant sometimes takes a while.

I realized that I didn't mention anything about how many seeds to plant when you are doing starts. This is up to you: how many plants you want and how much of a cushion you want to allow for dud seeds or dying plants. I plant two or three per cup to make sure I get everything I want and I usually keep everything that grows. This gives me extras. I sell them later in the season, when they are ready to go in the ground.

So that's it for today. May your garden be provident. Tomorrow I will write about my lawn and I'll post pictures. It's looking great.

Remember to share!

The opening post: Lawn and Garden and Root-bound

Today was a Saturday, so it was a big day in the whole gardening/landscaping area.

I spent the first major part of my day working on my front yard. Yes, I know, this isn't exactly part of a garden that provides sustenance, but there's great satisfaction in creating a lush, verdant swath of fescue and ryegrass and bluegrass-- all without chemicals.

So here's what I saw this morning when I stepped outside to get started. My grass has been greening up and is beginning to show some real life.

You might have noticed the curvaceous flower bed bordering my yard-- you know, the thing with the rocks lining about two-thirds of it. That has a growing strawberry patch, a large bunch of daisies, several spots of salvia, phlox and a lot of stonecrop in it.

Yes, I tore out the yard to make the flower bed. No, you don't want me to get into that very much-- way more work than I expected!

So I thought I'd take a more close-up picture of my yard. As you can see, that green swath was really the forest, but not the trees. Lots of thatch on that yard. I like some thatch; it keeps weeds under control and is a nice, natural mulch fertilizer, but it was clear something had to be done.

I was not looking forward to it, but I needed to rake the entire yard. Now, if you are one of the lucky ones, you either own a scarifier, or you can rent one easily. Not so much with me.

What's a scarifier? This is a machine that is essentially a power rake. You run it over your lawn and it shreds thatch-- pulling it up and doing a pretty fine job of it.

Let me break in here with a link or two to articles on dethatching your lawn and your lawn's first mowing:
http://www.helium.com/items/278603-when-to-dethatch-your-lawn
http://www.helium.com/items/269735-how-to-dethatch-your-lawn
http://www.helium.com/items/983491-lawn-mowing-tips-for-springs-first-cutting

Alright, back to business.

So you can use a scarifier, or use a rake.

I used a fan rake. Yes, I got double blisters on my hands. Yes, I hurt even now. No, I don't regret it. Here are some shots of how things looked as I went.

This is one third done. I started on the side to the right of this photo and raked toward the left, or east, side of the lawn.

No, there is no particular reason for this choice. It just appealed to me. Maybe I wanted to rebel against the sun's trajectory.

Anyway, that semi-haphazard pile that is sort of across the yard is the grass and leaves and other debris I had scraped up with my fan rake.

Here's another pic. I'm about half done here.

I was wondering if I had bitten off more than I could chew at this point.

But hey, take a look at all of that dead grass and other debris! Good times, eh?

You're asking, "Who's that charming little figure over there by the spigot?" And you're saying, "He's obviously being very helpful by turning the water on and off. And every time it turns on, he is being extra great because he caterwauls at the water that comes fizzing out of the loose connection and sprays him on the face."

That's my assistant for the day.

He's nearly two and he's awesome. He's number five and his name is Benjamin.

He's wearing a Boston Red Sox onesie. He inherits his teams in the same manner that his father did.

Anyway, back to the gardening. So I got the dethatching done. It took me about two hours to get it all raked.

After dethatching, I wanted to be sure I prepared my yard well so I could reseed. If you don't know what this means, let me gently caress you with some knowledge. Reseeding is when you build your turf by laying seed in your existing yard.

So I knew that by dethatching so vigorously, I had loosened the top inch or so of soil in my yard. My next step is to mow quickly, with the grass bag attached, to gather the loose thatch that had escaped my piles. I do this also to get my grass a little shorter, expose the soil a bit more, and in order to not have to mow for a couple of weeks while the new seeds sprout and take hold.

FYI: I lower the mower so it's leaving about 2 1/2 inches of grass.

With the mowing done, I decided to soften things up a little more by watering the entire yard briefly.

Note the sprinkler.

Now I have left out an important part of my organic lawn care. Many folks have to deal with lame weeds in their yard-- me included. We deal with crabgrass, creeping charlie, and dandelions mostly. Here's what I do: I carry around a dandelion slayer with me when I work outside. Every time I see a weed, I slay it with this handy dandy tool. Here:

Alright, the tool is not technically called a dandelion slayer, but it is made to remove dandelions permanently. And that leafy plant isn't a dandelion. It might be a phlox-like weed, but it doesn't really matter, because it had  to leave my yard.

I used that tool there to remove it and about thirty dandelion plants. Considering the fact that it takes me about thirty seconds or less to remove a dandelion, this is time well spent.

Anyway, once the yard had been watered briefly, I reseeded. I used a package of regular, straight seeds. It was a mixture of ryegrass, kentucky bluegrass (also good music!), and fescue. This is good stuff for high-traffic in my mountain conditions. I sprinkled it lightly all over the yard, then watered again to get the seeds weighed down and on their way to germination.


The final product for today:

Compare this shot with the first one above. Things are even-looking and the grass looks like a nicely brushed head of hair. But no greener yet. That will take time.

As for the provident garden, I did a bit of work there too. The thatch and clippings I gathered went into my compost. Then I watered my compost to get the decomposition process going. I also did some clearing of the garden patches in preparation for the soil to be fully tilled next week.

We will be tilling by hand again this year. We need to be able to handle the work. Yes, we have over 300 square feet of veggie garden space.

We can take it.

My final project was to deal with an extraordinarily root-bound spider plant. This plant is called Phoenix. I will tell you why later. I found a nice-sized planter pot, tossed some rocks in the bottom for drainage, added two inches of compost dirt (tasty!), and then pulled the poor Phoenix out of her old pot. This is what she looked like after fifteen minutes of me loosening roots:

Yeah.

I ended up spraying the root pack with a water bottle quite liberally. That helped a lot. Then I got her planted in some nice fresh soil in a far bigger pot. She went from a 6" pot to a 12" pot.

I felt like I could hear her say, "Ahhhh" as I patted soil around her.

She's back in place, hanging from a tough ceiling hook in the kids' room.

I also did laundry today, but that's just bragging!

This is a long post. I hope it's helpful.

If you feel like the Provident Garden is helpful, I invite you to pass along word. More people doing good things with the earth and self-reliance will do more good for our society than we can imagine.

See you tomorrow.